5 fearless predictions for the new year

It’s the beginning of the year, when all things are possible — including crystal ball gazing.

The Republican wave this year shifts the policy map toward smaller government at the federal and state level. So here are five things that will absolutely, positively, most certainly occur in 2011. Unless, of course, they don’t.

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1. At least one additional federal court will find unconstitutional Obamacare’s individual mandate to buy health insurance. That court will agree with the 25 plaintiff states that the Commerce Clause cannot be expanded to allow Congress to regulate an individual’s inactivity (choosing not to purchase insurance) merely because that individual might act differently (and purchase insurance) in the future.

This would effectively nullify the doctrine that Congress must legislate based on enumerated powers, in favor of an unlimited grant of legislative authority to Congress — something the framers never intended. Most liberals favor the idea of unlimited congressional power. Sadly for them, this is not what the Constitution specifies.

Congress and the courts most likely will take a dim view of these efforts. At least two of these regulatory excursions will be unsuccessful.

3. This Congress will move decisively to slow runaway federal spending. It will be successful in reducing total spending for domestic discretionary programs over the next two years after the bloated totals of 2010 — the last year of federal dominance by Obama’s liberal majority.

Moving the baseline downward hasn’t been attempted since the Reagan years. It can save tens of billions in the fiscal out years in compound savings and lower interest payments on a smaller national debt.

4. The Obama administration will announce yet another effort to focus “like a laser” on job creation and the economy. The president had to be dragged kicking and screaming to extend the current tax rates for two years — which will have a more positive effect on unemployment than anything else he might do.

But since Obama is someone who believes government-directed investments can best create economic growth, look for his administration to propose multiple federal government “investments” in “green” technologies (think Jimmy Carter’s Synfuels Corp.), rapid rail and other transportation and infrastructure projects. Whatever their individual merits, government-sponsored projects are politically, not economically, driven. So they are unlikely to have a major effect on Obama’s biggest vulnerability — record high unemployment and tepid economic growth.

5. New Republican governors and legislative majorities in large states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana will move decisively to put their fiscal houses in order. This will be achieved through far-reaching spending reductions and reforms — including bringing compensation for unionized public workers into line with the private sector, reforming health care (including Medicaid) to deliver services more efficiently and advocating tax programs designed to bring jobs and businesses back to their states.

At year’s end, these Republican governors, more than GOP presidential candidates, will eloquently make the case for why Republicans have the right policies and programs to reform a bloated Washington establishment and finally get the national economy growing again.

Frank Donatelli is chairman of GOPAC, a center that helps and advises future Republican leaders.